Modern Navigational Tools

Polynesian navigators or Wayfinders were masters at traversing the open ocean in the day or night by reading the sky, the ocean swells, and even wildlife. I think the Moana movie does a great job of giving tribute to the Polynesian people for being master wayfinders. Before getting into Polynesian navigation with my 4 year old, I wanted to make sure she understood what navigating is and how we navigate in the modern world. I used our circle time to introduce GPS, Compass, and maps as tools we use to find our way.

Introduction to Modern Navigational Tools

Objective: Introduce GPS, compass, and maps as tools to find our way.

Supplies:

Globe/picture of earth

Smart Phone or GPS

Compass

Magnet toys

Printed or drawn map

Intro Discussion:

Ask how do we know how to find our way to places?

Share that we have modern tools to help us find our way such as Compasses, maps, and Global Positioning Systems/GPSs.

Demonstrate the tools:

GPS

• If you have a smart phone you can open your phone GPS (Google maps, etc) to show how it can find your location on a map. Talk about how there are satellites in the sky sending a signal to identify where you are. Here’s a fun video that walks through that.

Later when you are out on a walk, show how your dot moves on the GPS on your phone when you move locations.

Compass

• The earth has different directions. Instead of left and right, the earth has north, south, east, and west. Indicate them on a globe/map.

• - Use a magnet toy to pull another magnet, then remove the magnets. Magnet toys could be fridge magnets, magnet wands, tegu blocks, etc. Talk about how the earth has a magnetic force and is pulling the compass arrow north.

• - Compasses use earth’s magnetic field to pull the arrow on a compass toward north and help us know which direction we are pointing on earth.  

(Originally, I wanted to use magnets to mess with and move our compass’s arrow, but it turns out that you can de-magnetize a compass that way. So, it is better to play with magnets, and then demonstrate that the compass uses a magnetic field separately. )

Maps

• Show them some maps

• Discuss how maps are pictures of landmarks, or objects we can see, that help us figure out our location. Landmarks can be roads, rivers, statues, trees, etc.

• Here are some ideas for playing with maps, by printing google maps and drawing on them

• You could also lay out a scene of toys then create a matching map but minus a toy or two. Then have them place a missing toy in it. Something similar to this

Once you have introduced the three tools, then you can apply them with an activity like an Egg hunt. You could do this all on the same day or spread it out. We found that talking about all three tools in the same morning was more than enough for my girls, and the egg hunt in the afternoon or another day helped give them a break from having to focus and listen for too long.

Activity: Directed Egg Hunt 

Objective: Apply what we learned about GPS’s, Compasses, and maps to find an easter egg like a treasure hunt.

Supplies:

Google maps as a reference

Compass

Pen and paper

Phone GPS

Easter eggs

A prize (treat, stickers, small toy, etc)

I drew a rough map of our neighborhood, using google maps as my guide. Then I marked out a few land marks (tree, red house, big rock, etc) and a location where I hid two Easter eggs. After I hid the eggs, without my kids seeing, we used the map to find the eggs and claim our sugary treasure.

I included a compass rose on our map for orientation. Before starting out, we used our compass to orient ourselves with our map and that the arrows on our map compass and our hand held compass both had needles pointing north. At turns and landmarks, I showed the girls how our location had changed and how the landmark matched our map. Then I’d let them guess which direction we needed to go to reach our next landmark.

At a couple of points on our walk, I opened my phone to show how my GPS had a map too and a dot to show where we were. Then we revisited the GPS to see that the dot moved when we moved.

 At the very end, we reviewed the fact that we used a compass, map, and GPS to navigate and find our Easter eggs.

Here my girls found the hidden eggs after using a compass and map to guide them.